Ten-Minute Play Festival

Sometimes the best way to take exciting risks, jump at new chances, and explore new ideas is to remove the time it takes to talk ourselves out of it, and the SETC Ten Minute Play Festival strives to do just that! By working within a strict guideline of one twenty-four hour period playwrights, actors, and directors band together to create brand new works and present them in front of an audience under a fun and intense time crunch. New play development is such an incredible process and ten-minute plays really allow us to get to the heart of an idea very quickly, especially with open-minded and kind collaborators.The process is like this: Directors and playwrights get paired up (six teams per year) and get a randomly selected genre, theme, and place. Actors present auditions and then they and the directors go to bed. The playwrights will stay up as long as it takes, sometimes all night, to create a brand new ten-minute play that honors all of the prompts before the next morning with the help of the resident dramaturg. Directors will join bright and early and have some time to ask their playwrights questions before the scripts are set in stone and printed. This is followed by a casting session where we make sure all actors who audition are teamed up with a role that is perfect for them, and then the playwrights finally get to sleep while their teams rehearse. We follow individual rehearsals with a group cue-to-cue, with the understanding that these are minimally produced. Everyone gets to take a break for dinner or quick naps, and then we meet to perform at the exact same time we met the night before to pair up and audition! The performance is followed by a talkback with a respondent with plenty of knowledge and expertise in new work development.

The process makes for a long day, but is always rewarding and exciting. It is always an extremely fun time and the teams leave every year having forged new bonds, professional connections, and genuine friendships. Which is in addition to leaving everyone’s brains and hearts changed in the way theatre does best! Please join us for our festival, we would love for you to be our newest collaborator!